Newspaper: Dead stay on Ohio voter rolls

August 31, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Nearly 5,800 Ohioans who’ve died still are registered to vote, and ballots may have been cast in the names of at least 16 Ohioans after their deaths, a newspaper reported Monday.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s office found more than 221,000 “mismatches” between the statewide voter-registration database and Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles records and told counties last month about the discrepancies concerning voters’ names, driver’s-license numbers or other information.

“The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires matching of statewide voter-registration records against motor-vehicle records to the extent required to verify accuracy of information provided on applications for voter registration,” said Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor and associated director of Ohio State University’s election-law center.

The Columbus Dispatch reported that its analysis shows 60 percent of the mismatches involved a voter’s first or last name, and nearly 30 percent involved a driver’s-license number, or a birth date couldn’t be verified — problems the newspaper said officials attributed mostly to misspellings or typos.

The newspaper said it linked those mismatches with its database of death certificates through the end of 2008 and then checked voting histories, finding at least 16 Ohioans who appeared to have voted after death.

Officials with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s office said that human or computer errors were to blame for instances suggesting a dead person voted.